


it takes a dedicated hand

by 1248



Series: as my options, oh, they narrow [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), M/M, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, au where everything is the same but martin has a gun, brutal pipe murder-typical violence, peter lukas found dead in magnus institute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:28:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1248/pseuds/1248
Summary: It was during another night of memorising the texture of the ceiling above his bed that one thought started to throb as insistent and awful as a migraine:"Why don’t I kill the bastard and be done with it?"Peter wasn’t like Elias. His mind games were much less effective. He probably wasn’t able to read minds. And, most importantly, he likely wouldn’t see it coming if Martin ran at him while brandishing a knife and screaming bloody murder.





	it takes a dedicated hand

**Author's Note:**

> alternate titles:  
Martin Blackwood Graciously Thanks Daisy For Her Inspirational Life Choices  
Peter Lukas Found Dead In Magnus Archives  
How I Got Away With Murder: The Martin Blackwood Story  
5 times Martin shot Peter and he survived + 1 time he didn't  
I Killed My Boss and You Can Too, One Man's Tale of Adversity and Perseverance  
The Telltale Fog  
How to Solve Workplace Disputes With Violence  
How Not to Treat Your Personal Assistant: The Peter Lukas Story  
Is This Blood, or Have You Just Killed Me For My Crimes Against Humanity  
Peter Lukas Dies and Gay Rights Happen  
or last but not least  
Here's How Slaughter Martin Can Still Win
> 
> no beta we die like men. also yeah sorry peter you are my favorite funny character but you have to fucking go.
> 
> this fic is dedicated to all the funny text posts people write about martin murdering peter cause i was like "yeah that SHOULD happen" and ive spent two very miserable sunday nights frantically writing this out. if you think it takes peter forever to die, know that the script i wrote in my lab notebook was like 2 pages long so youre welcome for cutting it

After his mother died, he’d been having something of a creative block.

He’d finally passed the period in which writing about it at all had felt like some kind of violation or trivialization of her memory. Poetry was good for processing trauma, he’d told himself, and reluctantly settled down to get out something on the subject before his week of bereavement time was up.

And he’d stared at an empty page for almost an hour, writing and erasing and rewriting and erasing again. Only when he started to erase things that he’d written on previous pages did he realise that he was probably not going to make any creative progress.

Which Martin supposed was natural. He’d never really been unable to write before, but he’d never had a parent die before so… it could hardly be said that it was the worst thing that had happened. 

But it was one more thing that he couldn’t rely on.

Martin hadn’t been sleeping well, and this seemed to exacerbate the issue somehow. He’d lie there, thinking in circles about everything. Sometimes a thought would strike him as poetic, and he’d almost write it down for later consideration, but the impulse felt dulled, lately. The words weren’t coming, and they wouldn’t be forced.

So instead of writing, it was all he could do to make and discard plans. He tried on different theories as to what Elias could’ve wanted, what their role was in all of it, what Peter Lukas was there to do, where they stood in relation to the rest of the powers, what was to be done about the possibility of a ritual...

Basira and Melanie might have called it scheming, but they hadn’t been there as long as he had. With Jon gone (as good as gone), he had seniority and he was well aware that the only way to prevent absolute disaster seemed to have something to do with a lot less action and a lot more quiet, and yes, occasionally sinister plotting.

(_ Eat your heart out, Elias. _)

But plots couldn’t really do anything against attacks from other powers, no matter how ominous they were in nature. That hadn’t been exactly what Peter told him, but it was the gist of it. Peter Lukas- avatar of the Lonely and all-around creep- came to Martin’s desk and offered him a deal in exchange for his service for the Forsaken and lending of (administrative) assistance when needed.

Martin’s acquiesce hadn’t gotten him anything yet. Actually, less than nothing. He’d lost time on Peter’s busywork (really Elias’s but thinking of it like that was bad for morale), lost the already dubious trust of his colleagues, and to his exasperation, his creative block started to extend to his tentative plans. 

They started to get as dull and repetitive as his ill-fated attempts at poetry.

It was during another night of memorising the texture of the ceiling above his bed that one thought started to throb as insistent and awful as a migraine:

_Why don’t I_ _kill the bastard and be done with it?_

Peter wasn’t like Elias. His mind games were much less effective. He probably wasn’t able to read minds. And, most importantly, he likely wouldn’t see it coming if Martin ran at him while brandishing a knife and screaming bloody murder. 

_ Probably _ and _ likely _ weren’t very good guarantees of success, but his patience was running out. He wondered if this is what Tim had felt like before that last night, just desperate to do something, anything if it meant he wasn’t standing by useless. Waiting patiently while monsters kept on doing whatever they pleased. 

At least it was a plan, even though it lacked the signature elements of both inaction and a complete lack of moral compass that Elias’s plans likely featured. Well, at least it didn’t have that first one. Martin hadn’t lately been up to the task of pondering the ethics of crimes against avatars of evil fear deities, but it was definitely somewhere in the grey.

It probably had a lot of sticking points that Martin couldn’t see from his current perspective, but it seemed like it would work given a bit of luck. Luck was something he tried to avoid relying on, as he had lived a generally luckless life, but with circumstances as they were…

Finding a gun was concerningly easy. Just a matter of shuffling through the things in Daisy’s locker in Artefact Storage (thankfully untouched by Basira since the Unknowing, judging by the layer of dust) and picking the firearm that seemed the least likely to do him significant recoil damage. 

It looked like the kind of handgun he would see in a film, and it was heavier in his hand than he had come to expect. Martin had next to no idea how to check if it was loaded, so he just made sure that the safety was on, and grabbed the magazine that had been set neatly next to the gun. 

He sincerely hoped that it was the right kind and wasn’t spent, since he had no intention of ever asking Basira for her input on the subject.

It took a bit of furtive research and a lot of strategic self-distraction before he started to feel even remotely ready to go through with what he had planned. He knew better than to do something stupid like go out and practice with the thing, but he at least poured over the Archive’s books on different types of firearms when he finally managed to run into a statement that mentioned them. 

He was ready with the prepared excuse that he was trying to determine what kind of gun the statement maker was in possession of, but Peter continued to show little interest in his archival duties, and Melanie and Basira still weren’t speaking to him outside of very suspicious-sounding greetings when he ran into them in the halls.

And so time flew until it was about six months since the world had been saved and four months since his mother had died and he felt rather confident about his plan to kill Peter.

The man seemed completely oblivious to the whole thing, though Martin tried to stay of a mind that Peter might be letting it all happen as part of some extremely complicated plan. He liked to think that the thought kept him sharp, but it mostly just reminded him of Jon’s paranoid spiral and made him nostalgic in a way he was not eager to examine.

Unsurprisingly for someone of his background, Peter did not make a habit of checking on Martin too often. Of course, he was definitely watching a decent amount of the time, and would interfere if Martin did anything that he really wasn’t supposed to do (mostly violations of what seemed to be the rules of Lukas family etiquette; see _ spending time with friends, having a nice chat with a coworker, trying to reconnect with literally anybody _…). 

At this point, Martin was half-sure that the man could smell it in the air when someone in Institute happened to enjoy a human connection, like some kind of sociopathic scent hound. But his recent activities hadn’t been of that nature, so he was crossing his fingers that Peter hadn’t been supernaturally tipped off while he’d hid the gun in the desk that used to be Elias’s. 

It was a blatant violation of gun safety rules, but Martin left the safety off. He’d likely only manage one good shot if he caught Peter off-guard, and the clicking of the safety wasn’t exactly subtle. The man could flick out of existence like nothing else, and he could only imagine the result if he tried something and Peter survived.

Unlike Elias, Peter didn’t seem to feel a freaky possessiveness regarding the Archival staff, and his polite honoring of Elias’s wishes would almost certainly fall underneath self-preservation or revenge.

But that all would be a problem if he missed, and he didn’t intend to miss.

Waiting for Peter to come and present himself for the shooting was only about as nerve-wracking as any of his other duties in the Institute, save for the reassuringly boring admin work. 

So it was that he buried himself in, staring hard at budgets and funding request reports and the sheet that listed all of their salaries, including his own. (Peter may or may not be aware of Martin’s impending murder attempt, but the man was without a doubt none the wiser about the fact that Martin had taken him upon himself to give most of the Archival staff a significant pay bump. Hazard pay and all that.)

He’d almost forgotten he was waiting for Peter when the man himself finally made an appearance. He told Martin something about news, and Martin hastily held up a hand for him to wait. If he looked away from the sheet for a second, he’d lose his place and he’d just have to recheck half the page.

“...By all means, though, carry on if this is something time-sensitive,” Peter was saying, when Martin looked up from highlighting the cell he was on and saving the sheet.

“Sorry, what?” he said, trying to relax back in his chair and evidently not doing a convincing job based on the slightly pleased look on Peter’s face. (He’d looked so disappointed when Martin had fully trained himself out of flinching when Peter suddenly came from thin air to ask him some stupid question about paperwork.)

“Oh, no problem, sorry to distract you from what I’m sure was some very important accounting,” Peter said pleasantly. Martin was just barely stopping himself rolling his eyes when he followed with, “But I have some news about the Archivist and I really thought it would be best if you heard it from me.”

Oh_ hell, _ news on Jon?

(Please don’t let it be he’s dead. Coma was better than dead. Seeming dead was better than being dead.)

Martin leaned forward in his seat, clutching at the edge of the desk desperately and then quickly moving his hands to grip at his legs, still overly aware of what lay in wait underneath the hardwood.

“What is it? Is he…?"

He stopped himself, hating the tremor in his voice.

Peter smiled kindly down at him, though his eyes remained distant and calculating.

“No need to panic, they’re saying he’s woken up. Has a heartbeat and everything.”

Martin was in the midst of slouching with relief when a thought occurred to him. This was exactly what he wanted to hear, and he was just going to let his guard down as soon as Peter mentioned Jon at all?

Peter was looking at him expectantly. 

His stomach dropped when he saw there was just the slightest hint of vapor in the room, only barely visible against the dark wood of the office door.

God, had Elias just given out the cliffnotes on him? _ Here is how to best emotionally compromise Martin Blackwood. Sit down, you’ll be here for a while. Step one: mention Jonathan Sims in any way, shape, or form. _

“That’s… fantastic,” he said, allowing himself to sound just as emotionally winded as he felt while he reached slowly with his left hand for the top drawer in the desk, where cold metal was waiting for him.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Peter agreed easily, though the thickening fog shifted, as if disturbed by a faint breeze. “But, Martin, I hope you haven’t got the wrong idea about all this now that the Archivist has woken up.”

“What does that mean?” Martin asked, keeping his voice as flat as he could and maintaining hard eye contact with Peter, who looked away after a moment. (The man couldn’t stand directness in any context, evidently.) 

He quickly crept his hand into the drawer and silently pulled the gun from its little hide-away and back out of view while Peter looked with what seemed like longing at the painting of the open ocean Elias had put up next to the bookcase.

“I mean that you made a promise to me, and a commitment to serve Forsaken in return for my protection of the Institute,” Peter eventually said, sounding almost annoyed for the first time in the conversation, “And you shouldn’t think that your Archivist’s sleeping beauty trick means that you won’t have to hold to your end of the bargain, _ or _ that the Institute won’t need to be protected anymore. You can’t have forgotten just how many times you lot were in peril even while Elias was here.”

Honestly, the notion that Jon could fix everything hadn’t even crossed Martin’s mind. It was definitely a nice thought, and one he might have even liked to entertain back before he’d seen Jon lying still as death in his hospital bed, looking far too fragile for someone that survived an explosion and a building falling on him with no visible injuries. Beyond the coma, of course.

However, it sounded like Peter had already decided that Martin would definitely indulge that flight of fancy, so. Waste not, want not.

“Well, we made it through it, didn’t we? Funny how you’re acting like the Archives just barely scraped along without your help when you’ve only been here for a few months. At least when- with Jon, I know for sure if he’s actually doing anything to help or not,” Martin shot back, watching warily as the fog twisted in agitation. The gunmetal was slowly warming to body temperature, clutched in his sweaty hand.

Peter shook his head with an air of patient indulgence, completely at odds with the fog clutching at his shoulders.

“Martin, even if that devil-may-care approach is actually what you think would be best for the Archives, we both know it’s about more than that. There’s something bigger on the horizon. These little conflicts are meaningless in the face of this coming threat, and I do think you know that.”

Martin couldn’t help but wilt slightly at that part. This supposed approaching evil certainly seemed to be worth worrying about if there was even a tiny bit of truth to its existence. But Peter had been ‘searching’ for the files on the topic for what felt like a suspiciously long time and this would be by no means the first time that Martin was played for a fool.

Seemingly encouraged by his reaction, Peter kept on, “I was worried that you may experience some… doubts, if you were to hear the news concerning the Archivist from anyone else. And I wouldn’t want you to jump to conclusions without all the information at your disposal-”

Martin snorted at that, and Peter frowned admonishingly at him before carrying on, “So I came here to tell you myself. I see that we did need to sort a few things though, so I am glad that I did.”

“Yes, of course,” Martin said, fingering the gun. He’d need to do something before Peter left…

“Alright, excellent,” Peter said, back at his full force of bland cheer. The fog had almost entirely faded out of the room, or it had at least all drifted over to gather close around him as he began to fade away.

_ Oh, there was something he could do with that. _

“Peter, one more thing?” Martin asked, polite as he could manage.

Peter looked up from where he had been tapping at his phone.

“Yes?” he said, already sounding strangely muffled.

“Were you really going to trap me in the Lonely over a little misunderstanding?” he asked, half out of genuine curiosity.

Sticking his phone in his pocket, Peter shot him an odd look.

“No? What makes you ask?” he asked, the faraway quality leaving his voice. 

Thanking whatever minor influence either the Archives or Elias had exerted on Peter’s natural sense of curiosity, Martin inclined his head in Peter’s direction, fixing his eyes on the space behind him.

Peter turned to look for what he must have assumed was a rogue part of Forsaken and Martin took his chance.

He got to his feet, raised the gun, aimed as best he could for the spot in between Peter’s shoulders and squeezed the trigger.

It jerked painfully in his hand, and made a shockingly sharp sound, and Martin involuntarily closed his eyes as he clutched the gun tight.

Martin slowly opened his eyes, increasingly sure that he’d missed.

Before him, Peter stood with his back still facing him. He blurred and faded in and out of sight like a mirage, and when he reappeared, Martin saw a spot of red rapidly growing in the center of his back. His finger seemed to move of his own volition, and the gun jerked again.

This spot was higher up, just under Peter’s neck, staining the collar with dark blood. 

The gun made another sound, and a third blot of red appeared, this one lower down and more to the side, right around his waist. He still wasn’t turned around.

Part of Martin was hissing for him to aim up, for the head, for a sure kill, but his hands wouldn’t listen as they trembled, and pulled the trigger one more time.

Peter started to turn in the moment that the gun fired, and so this bullet went into the wall. From the front, the blood was even more obvious, running from two holes in his torso and bubbling slightly on the way out from the center of his throat. On his face was a look of mixed dismay and amazement.

There was a sudden stinging pain at Martin’s ankles and he looked down to see a fog so thick and opaque it could have almost been white marble if not for the way it reached hungrily for him. It was rising very quickly, from his calves to his knees in the space of a breath.

He looked back at Peter, who was still watching him with that same look of semi-awe, now pressing one hand uselessly to his throat as blood soaked into his shirt. He was still blurring in and out of focus, like he couldn’t decide whether he should disappear or not.

Martin ignored the growing pain as the fog swept up to his waist and raised the gun to fire again.

Peter, who had been standing without apparent effort, swayed to his knees when the next shot caught him in the side of the neck. He was starting to look really alarmed, moving his free hand to hold against the hole in the side of his neck.

His mouth moved, but there was no sound. Martin thought maybe he couldn’t talk because of the holes in him, but then it occurred to him that he couldn’t even hear the sound of Peter trying to take in air through all the blood. Must be the Lonely blanketing out the sound.

He pointed at his ear with his free hand to indicate _ I can’t hear you _.

Peter raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, and Martin fired again, catching him in the stomach.

He would have to run out of shots eventually, right? Would Peter be dead before that happened?

His boss was now half-laying on the floor, his blood starting to form a small puddle around him. 

Martin glanced down to check on the fog that had been enveloping him, and shocked to find it gone.

He looked at Peter again. Maybe because he was so injured…?

“Martin,” Peter choked through a mouthful of blood. Martin stared at him. So he had called off the fog to make himself heard, then.

Martin nodded to show he was listening, keeping the gun trained firmly on Peter’s hunched figure.

“Did… did Elias put you up to this?” he asked, every word sounding like agony, and Martin frowned.

“No, came up with this on my own. Why, were you expecting him to do something like this when you came here?” he asked. It was a strangely horrible thought, that Elias had planned for Martin to butcher an apparent ally. No honor even between monsters.

Peter shook his head very slightly, wincing as more blood slipped between his fingers.

“Not at all. Was hoping this wasn’t...him getting the- the last word,” Peter croaked.

“So you_ are _dying then,” Martin said hopefully, and Peter glared at him.

“Yes! I-” he paused to cough and wheeze pitifully, face creased in pain, “Of course I’m dying! What- what exactly did you think was going to happen when you started shooting me?”

Martin shrugged one shoulder.

“I mean, I was hoping that it would work out like that, but… couldn’t be sure.”

Peter started to laugh, then cut off himself off to hack blood onto the floor and take several slow, rattling breaths.

“A crime of… passion, then?” he asked, eyes bright with amusement even as blood ran down his chin. “Because- it’s because your Archivist woke, I suppose. That’ll teach me to give you a-” gasp, wretch “- a courtesy call, hm? I always knew it would be my good manners that did me in, my upbringing was just-”

“Wait, that was true?” Martin couldn’t stop himself from blurting out. Some of the chill that had been creeping through him dissipated, but it wasn’t a pleasant feeling that made him bring his hand up to rub at his chest. 

Peter grinned at him with red climbing the cracks between his teeth, so different than the cold smile he normally wore. “It is my d.. distinct pleasure to inform you that Jonathan Sims is genuine- genuinely alive and well,” he said, the words sounding forced and wet.

The awful hot feeling between Martin’s ribs intensified, on the verge of pain.

“I hope you haven’t done all this-” he spat something thick and red onto the carpet “-because you thought I was lying to you,” Peter continued, his tone light but tinged with resentment.

“No, definitely not,” Martin reassured him, partially out of habit. “This has been a long time coming.”

Taking his hand off his throat, Peter slowly lowered himself until he was half laid down on the sodden carpet, leaning back on one elbow. He kept his face calm, but went impossibly paler when he jostled the wound in his gut.

“I suppose that’s something of a relief,” he rasped quietly. “And I don’t suppose you’d explain exactly _ why _ you chose to air your… grievances in this fashion?”

Martin tried to force it down, but he couldn’t stop from laughing. It was so awful, and his chest ached like a wound, but that question combined with the cat-like look of indignation on Peter’s face was too much for him to stay composed.

“You can’t be seriously implying that I’m the first person to try to kill you, Peter, I wasn’t born yesterday! Why don’t you- just look through every single time we’ve interacted, _ ever _ , and there’ll be loads of moment where you did something and I was there thinking, _ wow, sure would like to kill this man _!”

Lying on the floor, slowly drowning on his own blood, Peter managed to look politely insulted.

“But I didn’t expect you to go through with it,” he said, tone verging on petulant underneath all horrible wet sounds his throat made while he spoke.

“So, I’m just that meek and subservient?” Martin asked, keeping his tone sarcastic to hide the real anger underneath.

“_ Yes _,” Peter stressed, looking surprised that Martin had bothered to ask.

“I should shoot you again, just for that,” he said, raising the gun and pointing in the vague direction of Peter’s torso. Still couldn’t force his hands to aim it at his face. “Or maybe just to finish the job, due diligence and all that. _ Pretty _ sure you shouldn’t be able to chat with me like this if you’re actually about to pop your clogs.”

Peter shrugged, and seemed to gesture at all of his torn flesh and blood pooled on the floor as he did so.

“I’m an avatar. We’re hardy. Doesn’t mean I’m not dying,” he said shortly, his voice tight, but Martin had known Peter for long enough to recognise that tone. It was how he sounded when something was brought up that he thought needed no further discussion, and he had run out of gentle condescension.

It meant, _ don’t think about this _, and Martin disregarded it as he always had.

It was interesting that Peter could now speak _ more _ clearly than he had right after he’d been shot. Initially, it had seemed that he just naturally ran so cold so as not to be afraid of his own death, but maybe…

Oh, the bastard was having him on. He thought Martin might just lose his nerve and leave him to die alone (as Martin was sure his final request would have been) and then limp his way to someone who would sew him back together. 

Well, that wasn’t happening.

Peter, who must have seen the look on his face, struggled to raise a hand in supplication, but only managed to open his mouth before Martin shot him again. And again, and again.

This time, he didn’t pause between shots, and pressed down until the gun clicked and his arm had been jolted down to the shoulder. 

Once he looked past all the fresh wounds (shoulder, center of chest, one that caught him in the cheek…) he could see now that Peter looked properly afraid, as he hadn’t before. His pupils were pinpricks, and his faint, struggling breath came fast and shallow. If he’d been rallying before, that was over now.

“Still on the mend, Peter?” Martin asked, partly only to check if he could still be heard.

Pale blue eyes darted towards him, and Peter smiled faintly. If he was trying to look any less terrified, it didn’t work.

Martin watched him steadily, and eventually the breathing grew too faint to be heard. The eyes stayed locked on his own, like twin chips of ice. They didn’t look any different when the minute movements of Peter’s chest finally stopped.

He wondered if Elias could peer through them, now that Peter was gone. Maybe he’d been doing it the whole time. The thought seemed like it should bother him, but that would have to happen later, if at all. Martin wasn’t feeling much of anything at the moment.

But he still reached forward to close Peter’s eyes. If not as a gesture of affection to the man himself, then as one more act of defiance against the Beholding.

And when he slowly brushed the eyelids down, they stayed closed.

\---

He was sitting in his office, idly scratching lines in his poetry notebook when it hit him.

Clean-up after getting rid of Peter hadn’t been too difficult. Maybe it would be harder for others to get away with murder in a city as crowded and surveillanced as London, but his time with the Beholding had given him a good sense for when he was being watched and when he wasn’t, and he had always been an accomplished practitioner of the art of being ignored.

It wasn’t too much trouble to buy an enormous suitcase with some of the money he’d liberated from Peter’s wallet. He’d crammed the body into there, and then taken a long series of buses and trains until he was somewhere sufficiently isolated. (Somewhere Lonely. Haha.) Then he’d just dumped the body somewhere out of the way and called it a job well done.

Odds were, some intrinsic notice-me-not property of the Lukas family line would prevent a hiker from spotting it by accident.

And if not, he’d be the first to know if that unfortunate individual just so happened to make a statement to the Magnus Institute on the subject. ...Well, Martin might be the second or third to know.

He’d been absently considering how he would explain himself to Basira and Melanie in that event, and if they’d even want an explanation before they went ahead with wild accusations. Would they really buy that Peter got shot to death in a forest in the middle of nowhere in some unrelated conflict? 

At the very least, they’d expect Martin to know something about it. _ He didn’t tell me much _ probably wouldn’t fly with either of them.

He was toying with the idea of pretending that he hadn’t even known that Peter was dead when it occurred to him that Jon would probably have been the first to see through something like that. For all his baseless paranoia after he found out about Gertrude, he seemed to be pretty good at seeing through Martin on everything from un-subtle attempts at flirtation to lies about his academic background. 

Him being gone was probably why he had gotten away with lying to the others as long as he had.

And then without warning, the memory of Peter’s news from the day before lit up like a sparkler in the dark, shocking and bright.

He’d let it slip his mind, with all of his sordid activities and responsibilities cluttering his thoughts, but Jon was _ awake _ . He could go _ see him _.

At the same instant, the Archivist looked up from the statement he had been poring over, feeling oddly as if someone had called his name, or tapped his shoulder. 

It took him a moment to realise that it was impossible, since he was alone in his room. Visiting hours were long over, and most of the nurses on his floor were gathered around the table in the break room, chatting about plans for an upcoming holiday, and the one stray from that group was busy stealing prescription painkillers.

But still. He could feel the warm outline of someone’s attention, like a hand laid gently over his own.

It was certainly no one from the Archives, and not Georgie after her exit yesterday. Not Elias, either, who was not shy about making himself heard.

Jon settled back into his pillow, statement momentarily forgotten in his lap.

He would just have to commit the feeling to memory, so he would be able to identify it if he ran into it another time. So he could understand it, of course.

He reached for the glow of someone’s distant affection, someone’s fond thoughts. It was so warm. Details were hard, like trying to remember one of the dreams he’d had before it was all statement nightmares.

He falls asleep like that, still trying to reach for the shape of the unseen regard, and the hauntingly familiar mind behind it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to my partner for encouraging me to murder peter and telling me when peter was nattering on too long during the death scene and basically going "who cares about his last wishes." you are so correct all the time.
> 
> the title i ended up using is from mother mother's song wrecking ball.


End file.
